Thursday, April 24, 2008

Audio codecs : Pros & Cons

The audio codecs is a method of compression/decompression of audio file, audio data or streaming audio format. The codecs stands for Coders / Decoders.

There are various kinds of audio codecs available. Since these codecs have been implemented by different algorithms by number of companies; they have different specification and application in various fields. These audio codecs generally complies Industry standards.

The various software audio codecs are:

AAC

AAC+ / AAC+ Enhanced

AC3 or Digital Dolby

Digital Dolby Plus

Speex

FLAC

MIDI

MP3

MP3 Pro

Monkey’s audio

Ogg Vorbis

QCELP

Real Audio

SMPTE VC-1

Sony: ATRAC

WMA

Melody

HVAC

Wavepack etc

These various Audio codecs are technically differentiated from each other based on various factors which includes compression technology / algorithm, platform supported, sampling, OS supported etc

One can easily compare the various audio codecs on wikipedia. But still there is confusion over to which codec is the best? So let’s try to see what are the pros and cons of some codecs, which gives us the better idea about these codecs.